Charlamagne Tha God has discussed why he cancelled Kanye West‘s talk on mental health, which was scheduled to take place last week. Check out the clip below.
West was due to join The Breakfast Club DJ at New York’s Town Hall on October 17. The pair had planned to speak about the issues surrounding mental health.
Two days ahead of the event, however, Charlamagne Tha God announced its cancellation. “Unfortunately I think to have that conversation with [West] right now would not be productive and a total distraction from the point of the convo which is to eradicate the stigma of mental health especially in the black community,” he reasoned.
- READ MORE: Kanye West – ‘ye’ review
While discussing his friendship with the rapper, the DJ has now elaborated on why he cancelled the talk. Charlamagne told Stephen Colbert that the conversation surrounding West’s mental health had been ‘bypassed’ in other interviews.
“When I saw him in the White House he said he wasn’t on his meds because he had been misdiagnosed and he didn’t have bipolar and it was sleep deprivation,” he told the chat show host. “So I was like, ‘I think he needs to figure that out.’”
Echoing his previous Instagram announcement, the DJ added: “What I’m trying to do, which is elevate the conversation about mental health in the black community and trying to eradicate the stigma around mental health, I just didn’t think it would be a good conversation. It’d be a distraction.
Recommended
“I was trying to have a clear conversation because there’s nothing more powerful than watching two brothers, like me, on there talking about my anxiety and my PTSD and trauma from things that happened to me when I was younger, and him talking about being bipolar.”
Charlamagne Tha God said that he cancelled the event the day after West visited president Donald Trump at the White House. After saying that the rapper’s team were “all kind of relieved” by the cancellation and that the decision was “the best thing”, he revealed how ‘Ye himself reacted. “He took it well,” he said. “He definitely took it well.”
Meanwhile, Kanye West has donated over $70,000 to the Chicago mayoral candidate backed by Chance the Rapper.